


squirmed and turned like a skeleton key

by ohmcgee



Category: Batman Beyond, Batman Beyond 2.0 (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, M/M, Older Man/Younger Man, implied past Dick/Jason, mentions of past Bruce/Jason, poor Terry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-27
Updated: 2015-04-27
Packaged: 2018-03-26 02:39:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3833911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmcgee/pseuds/ohmcgee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes they look at him and Terry thinks they're seeing someone else entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	squirmed and turned like a skeleton key

**Author's Note:**

> Heed the tags. Also I didn't know how to tag it exactly, but there is some semi-drunk sex that's kind of fucked up, without giving the whole thing away. So if that's something that might bother or trigger you, definitely don't read this.

There’s still so much Terry doesn’t know, decades of history between the four of them so thick and guarded he sometimes feels like he’ll never breach it, forced to stand on the outside looking in, a stranger in the world’s most exclusive club. An imposter.

He knows they think he’s good enough now, that’s not it. They’ve seen his skill, witnessed the conviction that makes him able to do the job, to take over Bruce’s legacy and do it justice, but old habits die hard and Bruce never stops scowling and berating him for being reckless when everything goes ass up and the suit takes him back to the cave. He tries to cover it up with angry words and intimidation, but when he wraps Terry’s chest in bandages his hands are gentle and he goes quiet, old, calloused hands searching and exploring his body, checking him for wounds or broken bones. Sometimes Terry catches his eye and he sees it, the same look the Commissioner and Grayson give him sometimes, the one that makes him feel like they’re really not seeing _him_ at all. And then sometimes there’s something on Bruce’s face that looks so much like fear that it almost knocks the breath of Terry, makes him say _I’m sorry, I’ll be more careful_ , and Bruce just _looks_ at him for a minute, but then he follows it up with a “Hn, I seriously doubt that,” and it’s almost like the moment never happened. 

Terry can’t forget it though. He’s never seen Bruce look scared before. Angry, pissed off, irritated, disgusted, disappointed: these are the experiences he has had with Bruce Wayne’s emotions up until now. He didn’t even seem scared when his liver was failing him, just extremely annoyed. Terry knows it’s stupid to think that Bruce wouldn’t be scared of _anything_ , but he was the damn Batman all his life, surely if there’s anything that would scare him it wouldn’t be some stupid, punk kid who maybe leaps before he looks more often than not getting himself hurt. 

 

***

 

Terry’s maybe not the world’s greatest detective yet, but he’s learned a thing or two from Bruce. Body language, the things people say when they don’t say anything at all, and it takes him a couple of weeks, but finally he comes up with a hypothesis. 

“Did Bruce lose someone?” He asks Dick one afternoon after training and Dick doesn’t say anything, just walks over to the bar, pours himself a drink. “I mean, besides his parents?”

“McGinnis,” Dick says and it sounds like a warning, like a threat. Like _don’t._ But Terry never was very good at taking hints or doing what he should, so he keeps poking.

“You all did,” he says and it’s not a question, not really. Dick has that same look Bruce has when Terry starts asking too many questions, like he’s getting close to something, the same one Barbara gets when she talks about the past and Terry gets this prickly feeling like there’s important parts she’s leaving out. 

Dick doesn’t answer him, doesn’t even look at him, just finishes his drink all in one go and gets up to pour another.

“Come on,” Terry says. “I can handle it.”

Dick has his back turned but Terry can see the tension in his shoulders. “I can’t.”

“There was another, wasn’t there?” Terry pushes because out of all of them he knows Dick is the one most likely to confide in him, and he knows, despite the set of his jaw and the fist clenched by his side, that he’s gripping his highball glass tight enough to shatter it, that Dick can never stay mad at him for long. 

“Something happened to him.” Him, he’s guessed, by the way they all stare at him sometimes like he’s the ghost of someone he never knew existed. “Something not like you or Barbara or Tim.”

Dick tosses back the rest of his whiskey. “You don’t know what you’re digging up, Terry.”

“So _tell_ me,” Terry says and Dick turns around, harsh lines on his face, his mouth tight. Terry’s treading on dangerous ground here, but goddammit he deserves to know. “If you’re all just going to keep treating me like some ghost instead of seeing the person right fucking in front of you who’s actually _alive_ and --”

When Dick grabs him by the hair and crushes their mouths together Terry thinks _god, finally_ , but it’s not exactly the way he’d imagined it would happen. Dick’s tongue tastes bitter and strong like whiskey and his kisses are angry, bruising and tearing at Terry’s mouth, his fingers tight in his hair. He kisses him like he’s fighting -- no, like he’s trying to forget, and once Terry realizes that he yields, just lets Dick pour everything into him and hopes that he can be enough. 

Dick takes him to bed and strips him, lays him out and pushes his hair out of his face, looks into his eyes, then turns him onto his belly and runs his hands up and down his back, puts his mouth over every inch of his skin, kisses from his shoulder to the back of his thigh. When he asks if he can fuck him Terry says _yes god please_ , but he’s under no pretense that this is any different from the hundred of other times he’s been treated as a carbon copy of someone who’s been gone for too long, someone who left his mark so deeply that it left everyone around him broken and scarred inside. 

Dick’s hands on his hips are strong, tight, and he whispers and murmurs sweet, encouraging things to Terry when he buries himself inside, kisses the back of his neck, his shoulder, and it feels so good, feels like everything he’s been waiting for, that Terry pretends that the name Dick says when he comes is his, not a name he doesn’t recognize that sounds like it’s being ripped right out of Dick’s heart. 

 

***

 

The thing is, Terry _is_ reckless. He’s getting better at it, but sometimes shit just happens. Sometimes you get tossed off a building because you’ve slept a total of two hours in the last two days and the suit gets all fucked up and you have to face the wrath of Bruce Wayne to get it and yourself fixed up.

“Take it off,” Bruce growls, so Terry does, strips the suit off to his undershirt and boxers, hops up on the table to let Bruce catalogue his injuries, broad, rough hands flattening out over his ribs to see if any are broken or just bruised, and Terry shivers as Bruce’s fingertips drag over his navel. 

“What happened?” Bruce snaps, but Terry’s onto him now, can hear the slight edge of concern and panic in his voice laced inside the vitriol and anger. “I taught you better than this.”

Terry shrugs and hisses when pain explode all down his right side and Bruce’s hands are there immediately, feeling for any protruding bones, but when he looks at Terry again his eyes are bright with fury.

“No more,” he says and he pops Terry’s arm back into place so fast Terry doesn’t even have time to scream, just opens his mouth in silent shock. “You’re done. You’re too damn reckless and hot-headed and _no more._ ”

Terry reaches out and grabs Bruce’s hand before he walks away, pulls him until he’s standing between Terry’s knees.

“What --”

“You want to look at me,” Terry says, fingers a tight circle around Bruce’s wrist. “And see your dead lover, that’s fine. You want to touch me and pretend he’s here and whole, that’s fine too.” He drops Bruce’s hand. “But just remember, I’m _not_ him.” 

Bruce looks terrified, looks _caught_ , and it’s so unnerving and unnatural of an expression to see on his face that Terry leans in and presses his mouth against his because he doesn’t know what else _to_ do. He half expects Bruce to deck him, expects him call him a stupid kid and tell him to go home. He doesn’t expect to feel the same fingers that stitch him up and wrap him in bandages to gently thread through his hair, for Bruce’s mouth to open up against his and pull him in, but it’s not unwelcome. He kisses Terry like it’s all he’s ever wanted to do, sighing into his mouth, and it feels so much different than it did with Dick that Terry feels dizzy with it, a warmth spreading out from his belly. Where Dick wanted to forget, Bruce wants to _remember_ , takes Terry’s face in his hands and looks into his eyes, kisses him with the kind of affection Terry didn’t even know he was capable of, takes him upstairs and spreads him out and _worships_ him for hours. He spends half an hour kissing the inside of his wrist, kissing every freckle on his back, tracing the sharp angles of his hipbones with his thumbs like Terry’s body is something new to be discovered. 

“What was he like?” Terry asks when he’s underneath him, with Bruce staring down at him a little too fondly for Terry to think it’s even remotely for him. 

He expects Bruce to get angry, to tell him to mind his own business, but instead his face softens. “Impulsive. Reckless. Beautiful.” He reaches down, brushes Terry’s hair out of his eyes. “A lot like you.”

“Is that why you’re doing this?” Terry asks.

Bruce smiles at him, but there’s a sadness in his eyes. “I could lie to you and say no.”

“No,” Terry says, hooking his legs around Bruce’s waist and flipping them over. “No more lying.”

Bruce fucks him slow, arms wrapped around Terry like a cage, breathing into his neck, and when Bruce calls him by his name, not the name of a dead boy he’ll never be able to replace, when he looks up at him and for the first time maybe ever finally sees _him_ , it’s the most intense rush and Terry comes, completely untouched. 

 

***

 

“I’m not him,” Terry says the next night when he puts on the suit, Bruce staring him down the entire time. “I know what I’m doing.”

“So did Jason,” Bruce snaps and it’s so jarring to hear him say his name that Terry stops mid-stride, suit hanging half off one arm. 

“What?”

“You should know. It wasn’t his fault,” Bruce says. “Jason was a bit reckless, yes. But he was a skilled, capable fighter. He knew what he was doing too, McGinnis. Sometimes...sometimes it’s not enough.”

“I get it,” Terry says. “You loved him. But Bruce, I’m --”

“He was the most important thing in my world,” Bruce says matter-of-factly. 

Terry slides the rest of the suit up, much to Bruce’s dismay. 

“But,” Bruce says, sighing as he helps Terry secure it in the back. “I’m starting to realize that you are also important to me.”

“I’ll be careful,” Terry promises and Bruce just gives him a small smile. 

“You won’t,” he says. “But come back to me anyway.”

 

***

 

“You need to stay away from him,” Barbara says the next time Terry delivers a couple of Jokerz to her. They’ve had this conversations countless times before, mostly in the beginning when she tried to talk him out of it every time they’d run into each other, but now it sounds like a different conversation altogether. Terry doesn’t know _how_ she knows, but she does. He can see it in her judgmental stare and the hidden concern in her eyes. “He manipulates and uses and he gets pretty kids like you _killed._ ”

“There’s more to him than that,” Terry argues and Barbara goes pale.

“You’re more like Jason than I thought,” she says and it doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Terry decides to take it as one anyway.


End file.
